this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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DeGoogle Yourself

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I feel like #degoogle seems to embody a greater movement to leave bigtech. Here are the crazy things I've done over the last month or so.

  • Installed Arch on my laptop about a month ago
  • re-engaged my Mastodon and Bluesky while deleting Twitter and unfriending everyone on Facebook
  • Installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel
  • Moved email to custom domain and Tuta from Gmail
  • Moved to NextCloud in place of Google Drive
  • Moved photos from Google Photos to Ente Photos
  • Moved my PKM and Notes to Logseq
  • Moved from Chome and Google Search to Firefox, Tor and DuckDuckGo
  • Just deleted Reddit and started a Lemmy account.

It's been a ride and I'm open to other suggestions and guides.

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[–] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Great! All of these are great alternatives, but I would replace Firefox with librewolf.

[–] aurorachrysalis@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 hour ago

I second that you use Librewolf, which is a hardened fork of Firefox.

But beware of using any recent firefox, zen, and librewolf packages from the AUR. They supposedly contain malware.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Thanks for sharing this list. Bookmarking for when I'll be doing the same.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Congratulations. Only moving away from Google entirely took me 3+ years. You really killed this fast.

[–] pahulf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I was at home recovering from lumber fusion so I had some free time on my hands b🤣

[–] appropriateghost@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 hours ago

Welcome! that's quite a list of changes and i am impressed how fast you're freeing yourself from shit platforms.

You hit a lot of good checklist items, well done.

[–] retype@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

If you're in need of GPS for android auto, I recommend organic maps as an entirely offline and privacy respecting alternative to Google maps.

[–] Ephemeral@feddit.org 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I've tried this one I got fined because it sent me through a road that was recently switched to "license holders only". Mostly my fault because I didn't see the sign but another time it tried to send me through roadworks and refused any alternatives. However great the idea of OpenStreetMaps is, community based maps are only as good if you have community members nearby.

I'll stick with Waze for navigation.

[–] dafunkkk@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

comaps is the new community one

[–] retype@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh thanks for the tip. Trying it today.

[–] raptore39@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Apart from being a fork, why would I move to Comaps? I checked and Organic Maps was still being updated. I wouldn't mind moving given a reason, though I don't see the point yet

[–] Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

organic maps has taken steps to move toward privatization. here is the open letter by the CoMaps founders about why they stopped contributing to organic and started CoMaps

[–] raptore39@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

Thank you for explaining it and the source, I'm swapping over right now

[–] Shamot@jlai.lu 5 points 10 hours ago

If you still use your Google account to synchronize your contacts and calendar, you can move them to Nextcloud too.

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Also make sure to uninstall the Facebook app from your devices as well as any other Meta owned apps like Instagram. It was somewhat recently discovered they are using it as a backdoor to your web browsing history on any websites with Meta plugins, even when the browser isn't tracking you directly. Though GrapheneOS should prevent that communication between apps if you don't give the web browser extra permissions, better to be safe.

[–] pahulf@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

I've uninstalled all those apps!

[–] Tapionpoika@lemmy.ml 14 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Congratulation! familiar list. The workload was quite surprising, wasn't it? How many google/gmail logins you had to change? Youtube to freetube? Or how you going with that?

To me META was quite hard to cut off because there is not really alternative to whatsapp. However META is probably the most toxic from those 5 so it felt best.

[–] pahulf@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

It was a lot of work. I had the benefit of having time off and recovering from spinal fusion to make this happen. I deleted many of my accounts that I used gmail for logins. My gmail address that people have had for years is now forwarding to my custom domain. For YouTube I've been using PeerTube and not using YouTube at all.

Meta is hard as I manage pages for work, but I currently have no friends which caused my wife to get messages from friends asking if we were getting divorced 🤣. I've brought my wife, sister and mom over to Signal so far by SMS is difficult to get people to change. I just cancled my Whatsapp account and if people want to connect they can reach out.

[–] JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The hardest part is to have your mail sent directly to your domain, skipping Google entirely. It’s such a painful process!

I started with a passive-aggressive strategy delaying replies to who still uses gmail: “apologies, I rarely use gmail these days…”

[–] pahulf@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

That's is a good idea!

[–] CCMan1701A@startrek.website 3 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

what did you use for your 2fa codes? Most of mine are in google authenticator and I would likely need to migrate them first.

[–] ndupont@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 hours ago

I moved my extensive 2FA to Bitwarden Authenticator - I think I had to scan the migration QR codes from Google authenticator and recover the keys manually but it worked fine

[–] smashing3606@feddit.online 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Aegis is another option. I use vaultwarden for most OTP.

[–] Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago

+1 on Aegis, love it, it's FOSS and on F-droid. Can make auto backups/exports (encrypted/not), can register codes from a screenshot of a QR code (love that feature when I'm on my phone), it's a simple and clean design overall.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Most MFA codes I can store in freeotp+. Import/export function means I can back it up, too.

[–] TVA@thebrainbin.org 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I keep mine in 2FAS and Vaultwarden.

[–] JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago

Same Here: 2FAS. If you are into coding, you can also write your own: there are lots of libraries to do the cryptography for you.

[–] pahulf@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

I have found something yet, but I've heard ENTE Authenticator is pretty good.